The transfer of security control from a US-led international mission to Afghan troops has reached an irreversible phase, a top Nato commander said Tuesday, as he outlined moves to stem insider attacks on Nato forces. "We have now reached a phase where the transition is irreversible," said Germany's General Wolf Langheld, chief of Nato's Allied Joint Force Command (JFC), based in Brunssum in the south-eastern Netherlands.
"Afghan police and security forces are now in the lead to provide security in 75 percent of the country," he told journalists. Afghan President Hamid Karzai in May announced a new transfer of security control from Nato that would see local forces take responsibility of three-quarters of Afghanistan's population. It is the third phase of the transition of military control in the war-torn country and another step towards the eventual withdrawal of 130,000 US-led Nato troops by the end of 2014.
ISAF expected its forces in Afghanistan are to decreased to just under 100,000 by the end of the year, the JFC's deputy chief-of-staff, Major-General Joseph Reynes Jr. said, but how many would remain after 2014 still had to be decided. Langheld, who commands the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan's operational headquarters, said so-called "green-on-blue" attacks were of "grave concern".
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